Diverging levels of research efficiency change the global landscape of innovation

by Dirk Van Damme
Head of the Innovation and Measuring Progress division, Directorate for Education and Skills

Recovering from the current recession and building a sustainable economy based on growth and social progress require investments in innovative research. No future is imaginable without a new wave of innovation. But innovative ideas come from creative research, in many cases produced by universities and research institutions. Over the past decades countries have generally increased their investment in R&D, leading to higher numbers of researchers, more research activities and higher research output. Thanks to more sophisticated indicators and monitoring tools, we are now able to measure progress in research and to evaluate the impact of research in the global research system.

This global research system still is a rather concentrated system, with a very strong core and a wide periphery. Despite globalization and increasing access to research findings thanks to technology, many countries still are completely absent from this global community. Of the research universities included in the top 200 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2012, more than half are in the United States (76) or the United Kingdom (31). In research the world is becoming flat only at a very, very slow pace. This is strange, because sharing ideas and knowledge on the Internet is even easier than transferring money. And, in contrast to money, sharing knowledge enriches both parties in the communication chain.

Yet, the massive size of the research infrastructure in the core countries is partly misleading. We know a lot about many input measures, but they tell us only one side of the story. What matters more is the impact of research. Bibliometric measures such as citation and impact scores, calculated from big databases, now allow seeing where the most relevant research is located. Next to research measures, since 2010 the new methodology of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings now also include good measures of research impact, with citation indicators developed with Thomson Reuters, the global leader in research database management. These data are now mostly used to compare universities, but we also can use them to compare countries and shifts in the global research system over time.

The United States still are world leaders when it comes to investments in research. The output of their universities in terms of size and impact puts the country among a select few in the world. Based on the average of their 76 universities in the 2012 ranking, the US score 85.21 points on the citations indicator. But the average score of French (83.40), Irish (81.50) and Swiss (81.20) universities in the top 200 follow closely. The strange thing is that the citations score does seem to have almost no relationship with the research score, which basically is a measure of input. Comparing individual universities on both measures, there is an extreme variation between the two scores. High investments do not at all generate automatically high outputs in terms of citations and impact. On a country level we even see a negative correlation between the research input score and the citations score of -.53. This is mainly due to Asian countries such as China, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and Singapore, who make huge investments in research but still fail to generate impact. The average research input score of all these Asian countries is higher than the average score for US universities, while their average citations score is much lower. These countries learn that it doesn’t suffice to create an excellent research infrastructure, but that it takes time and probably specific policies to generate research which finds its way into the heart of the global knowledge system.

Dividing citations scores by research scores gives a proxy for research efficiency in a country, at least among the universities who can compete with the very best in the world. Countries with the best level of research efficiency are France, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland, and all of them do better than the US or the UK. Adding a time dimension makes the picture even more contrasting: these five countries are all improving their research efficiency over a period of two years with comparable data (2010-12), while China, Chinese Taipei, Korea, and Singapore, together with Australia and Austria are below average and decreasing in research efficiency (see graph above).

The global research system definitely is diversifying beyond the two traditional core countries with world-class universities, but the countries in the immediate periphery, mainly in Europe, are the ones who benefit from that. They are not as massively investing as for example Asian countries, but they do it much more effectively, probably by targeting their knowledge strategies better. Ultimately, it will be the research that matters which will find its way into innovation. Smart and targeted policies are probably much more effective than ambitious, but very broad investment policies.

Links:
OECD finds greater efficiency outside the elite: Times Higher Education
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)
Chart source: OECD

Better skills and better policies lead to better lives for women

by Michelle Bachelet
United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women

The global economic crisis, with high levels of unemployment, especially among youth, and rising inequality, with large wage gaps between high- and low-skilled workers, has added urgency to the need for better skills. This is especially important for women, who already face barriers to participating fully in the economy. Investing in their skills from early childhood, through compulsory education, and throughout their working life can transform women’s lives and drive economies. Equally important are better policies to promote equal rights and opportunities and women’s full participation in public life.

Investment in skills is particularly important during these tough economic times.  Skilled workers play a crucial role in generating future jobs and economic growth. Women’s entry into the labour market has been an important driver of European economic growth in the past decade. Research finds that closing the female-male employment gap would have positive economic implications for developed economies, boosting US GDP by as much as 9% and euro area GDP by as much as 13%. A 2011 report by the International Labor Organization and the Asia Development Bank revealed that a gender equality gap in employment rates for women cost Asia USD 47 billion annually – 45% of women remained outside the workplace compared to 19% of men.

It is time to remove the barriers to women’s full participation in the economy. The OECD has found that the main reason 25-39-year-old women cite for choosing to work part-time is their care responsibilities. The same reason is given when inactive women are asked why they don’t participate in the labour market at all.  Globally, women are still responsible for 60% to 80% of household chores and childcare. Worldwide, women account for 58% of unpaid work.

Although 552 million women joined the global labor force between 1980 and 2008, and research shows that reducing the gender employment gap improves economic growth, millions of women remain marginalised from the formal economy. In Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, only about one-quarter of adult women were in the labour force in 2010, compared with 70% to 80% participation rates among adult men.

An agenda for equality is needed that includes better skills and better policies so that women can exercise their economic, social, cultural and civil rights and economies can be healthier and more inclusive. Policies are urgently needed to help women and men reconcile work and family responsibilities, through the provision of childcare and maternity and paternity leave, and flexible working hours. Tax and pension systems also need to be revisited and revised to encourage equality.

When it comes to promoting women’s economic empowerment, we are not starting from scratch. There are many important initiatives taking place in all regions, including in low- and middle-income countries, to ensure economic justice and security for women. These include flexible childcare that enables women to participate in the labour force, fair pensions to ensure that older women do not live in poverty, cash transfers to enable families to send their girls to school, and training that gives women skills in entrepreneurship and new technologies. Our challenge is to make the equality agenda universal. In 2013, UN Women will use our flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women, to present evidence on the policies that work, to enable countries to learn from one another and drive the change we want to see.

Links:
UN Women
For the OECD Skills Strategy go to: http://skills.oecd.org
See also OECD work on:

OECD Work on Gender via www.oecd.org/gender

Gender equality and women's empowerment
Early Childhood Education and Care
OECD Forum 2012
Photo credit: Girl with balloons /Shutterstock

Everybody into the talent pool

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education

The OECD has just formulated a Skills Strategy to help countries make the most of their peoples’ talents.

How does one even begin to consider an issue as complex as skills? We found that visualising the supply of skills as a talent pool helps. The idea is to create a larger and larger pool of people who have fully developed their skills, encourage those people to supply their skills to the labour market, and then ensure that those skills are used effectively on the job. This new animated video will show you what we mean. 

Links:
To download the report:  Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Lives: The OECD Skills Strategy   – and much find out more about skills and skills policies around the world – visit our interactive skills web portal: http://skills.oecd.org

Follow the launch of the Skills Strategy and join the debates on @OECD_Edu  #OECDSkills